Earth's projected warming hasn't improved for 3 years. UN climate talks are still pushing

[BumRushDaShow]

Source: AP

Updated 8:27 AM EST, November 14, 2024


BAKU, Azerbaijan (AP) — For the third straight year, efforts to fight climate change haven’t lowered projections for how hot the world is likely to get — even as countries gather for another round of talks to curb warming, according to an analysis Thursday.

At the United Nations climate talks, hosted in Baku, Azerbaijan, nations are trying to set new targets to cut emissions of heat-trapping gases and figure out how much rich nations will pay to help the world with that task.

But Earth remains on a path to be 2.7 degrees Celsius (4.9 degrees Fahrenheit) warmer than pre-industrial times, according to Climate Action Tracker, a group of scientists and analysts who study government policies and translate that into projections of warming.

If emissions are still rising and temperature projections are no longer dropping, people should wonder if the United Nations climate negotiations — known as COP — are doing any good, said Climate Analytics CEO Bill Hare. “There’s an awful lot going on that’s positive here, but on the big picture of actually getting stuff done to reduce emissions ... to me it feels broken,” Hare said.

Read more: https://apnews.com/article/climate-change-warming-projections-baku-paris-agreement-285ebf7f831f09ac2c913a0e1b59e43a

[nmmi]

1. In the linked article, there's a graph of CO2 emissions from 1998 onward for 7 countries/regions:

China, India, all other developing countries other than China and India, U.S., Europe, Russia. Unfortunately there's no total. It says "Source: Global Carbon Project", so they presumably have totals (no link in the article to it, sigh).

https://apnews.com/article/climate-change-warming-projections-baku-paris-agreement-285ebf7f831f09ac2c913a0e1b59e43a

It also is apparently just CO2 emissions, not all greenhouse emissions. I think greenhouse gas emissions other than CO2 emissions are rising faster than CO2 emissions, but I haven't looked for links (non-CO2 greenhouse gasses are not mentioned in the article at all).

CO2 is currently responsible for about 2/3 of the heating, the remaining greenhouse gasses are about a third from stuff I've read elsewhere.

Even though China’s fast-rising emissions are starting to plateau, they are peaking higher than anticipated, she said.

it sure doesn't look like its plateauing to me. The last data point is 2023. Maybe 2024 over 2023 will be flat because of China's economic problems, just a guess.

Also Wednesday, France’s environment minister, who was set to lead the delegation, pulled out of the talks after Azerbaijan president Ilham Aliyev called out France and the Netherlands for their colonial histories.

As a reminder, Azerbaijan is the host country of an attempt to do something about catastrophic global climate disruption. Why they have to bring up century-old history, who knows. I read that part of northern Azerbaijan, with a large ethnic Russian population, is probably on a short list of Putin's next-after-Ukraine target list. I wonder why they don't bitch about Russia's colonial history (Azerbaijan was part of the old Soviet Union).

[BumRushDaShow]

2. "I think greenhouse gas emissions other than CO2 emissions are rising faster than CO2 emissions,"

IIRC, CH4 (methane) may be one. Have seen a number of articles complaining about all the emissions from pigs and cattle.

[canuckledragger]

3. There's also methane escaping from permafrost areas.

There was an article years back about mysterious large holes showing up from nowhere in Russian permafrost that was determined to be trapped methane escaping from the thawing ground.

https://www.cnn.com/2024/11/11/climate/exploding-siberian-craters-permafrost-explained/index.html

[BumRushDaShow]

4. Yes I have heard that too

as well as from glaciers that are slowly melting.

[nmmi]

5. Combined Heating Influence of greenhouse gasses

Combined Heating Influence of greenhouse gasses (it looks like CO2 is about 2/3 of the total). 10/9/24 https://upload.democraticunderground.com/1127176952
https://www.climate.gov/media/14599

There's a band of very faint light blue at the top - I believe that is CFC's. The next two bluish ones are HCFCs and CFCs

The purple one above the methane is nitrous oxide.

There's been a 49% increase in GHG Heating Influence since 1990



Yup, methane is the big number 2 (in more ways than one )

[BumRushDaShow]

6. Those xFCs are the substances used for coolants/refrigerants

Fluorine and chlorine being pretty reactive with hydrogen. Had to check to see where the nitrous oxide was coming from as that is an odd one (aside from use as an anesthesia)... and apparently it tends to be released due to current agricultural practices. I know there had been an extended push to remove phosphorous/phosphate fertilizers that have caused all sorts of issues in water systems but the use of nitrogen (part of the "N-P-K" ratios/categorizations for fertilizers, where the "N" is "Nitrogen" and is used to promote foliage growth) and reactivity with oxygen is interesting, as it's usually sourced from some sort of ammonia (NH3) compound.